Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, Sunday Review, July2, 2017<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 So, with this latest toad jumping from our president\u2019s mouth, is Donald Trump acting like a sexist pig or simply a pig?<\/p>\n
I proffer, a pig.<\/p>\n
I have no doubt that he would attack a man\u2019s appearance in the same breathtakingly below-the-belt way if he felt humiliated by that man and had the ammunition.<\/p>\n
In his vile tweet about Mika Brzezinski, he called her crazy. He often tweets that women journalists \u2014 including me \u2014 are crazy. Yet in that same tweet about Mika, he called Joe Scarborough \u201cpsycho.\u201d And he told the Russians in May that James Comey was \u201ca nut job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some, including Scarborough, think Trump goes after women harder. Certainly, it resonates more with women because of Trump\u2019s history of sexist remarks, his taped boasting about assaulting women and his habit of rating women\u2019s looks on a 1-to-10 scale. (He did once tell me, though, that he considered women \u201ctougher\u201d and that he related to them better.)<\/p>\n
There is also the historical context: It is a more sensitive matter for women because for centuries, they relied on their looks for economic security, and they continue to be judged more on physical traits and clothing choices.<\/p>\n
But as some women anchoring cable shows call for the women in the Trump administration to rise up in protest, I say: Let\u2019s not narrow it to sexism.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s even more troubling than that. It\u2019s cruelty on a Grand Guignol scale, both in Trump\u2019s heartless tweets and in his mindless salesmanship of the Republicans\u2019 heartless budget. When Trump called the House health care bill mean, he knows whereof he speaks. He\u2019s the King of Mean. Pathetically, Trump mistakes cruelty for strength.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old president\u2019s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the \u201cMorning Joe\u201d anchors and Megyn Kelly \u2014 these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.<\/p>\n
Trump has moved his shallow kiddie wading pool of gossip and ridicule from Trump Tower to the White House, where it is so outlandishly out of place that it often feels like we have a Page Six reporter as our president.<\/p>\n
Trump is isolated in the White House, out of his milieu, unable to shape the story, forced to interact with people he doesn\u2019t own. Even the staffers folding his clothes aren\u2019t on his payroll.<\/p>\n
Before he got to D.C., Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state. Even though he\u2019s in the safest space of all, he\u2019s not in a safe space.<\/p>\n
Trump has always been obsessed with looks \u2014 his own, men\u2019s and women\u2019s. One of his favorite phrases is \u201cHere\u2019s the beauty of me.\u201d He walks through life as though he\u2019s the judge in an \u201980s swimsuit contest \u2014 even with his own wives and older daughter. \u201cShe\u2019s got the best body,\u201d was his typical refrain about Ivanka.<\/p>\n
I was at The Times in New York in 1999 when Trump, talking to an editor, commented admiringly on a sexy, buff picture of Anna Wintour in a white wife-beater on the cover of New York magazine. \u201cShe will never look this good again,\u201d Trump bro-claimed to the male editor. (He was wrong.)<\/p>\n
Trump blasted his way up in the 2016 campaign by mocking his opponents\u2019 looks \u2014 male and female.<\/p>\n
At a New Jersey fund-raiser, Trump teased Chris Christie, \u201cNo more Oreos.\u201d He made fun of Jeb for ditching glasses for contacts and Rick Perry when he put glasses on. He belittled Little Marco for sweating.<\/p>\n
He famously and viciously mocked Times reporter Serge Kovaleski for his disability. And his aides think John Bolton lost his shot at secretary of state due to his yeti mustache.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is mean to men as well as women,\u201d says Trump biographer Michael D\u2019Antonio. \u201cWhen he was planning to run for president in 2014, he required males and females in his organization to get in shape, and back in the \u201990s Donald would hand out tubes of Rogaine to male executives and say the worst thing in the world is for a male executive to go bald.\u201d<\/p>\n
Certainly, Trump is squeamish about bodily functions. He once bragged to Howard Stern that Melania seemed impervious to bathroom needs and he weirdly found it \u201cdisgusting\u201d that Hillary took a bathroom break during a debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cBodily fluids bother him,\u201d D\u2019Antonio says. The famous germaphobe once complained to me about the time a man came out of a New York restaurant bathroom with wet hands and shook his hand. Trump said he couldn\u2019t eat after that.<\/p>\n
I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt after his comment on Megyn Kelly about \u201cblood coming out of her wherever\u201d when he claimed he meant her nose. But later, a longtime Trump associate told me that Trump had practiced that line before he said it on CNN and that it was meant to evoke an image of Kelly as hormonal.<\/p>\n
Of course, since Trump and some of those close to him have such an elastic relationship with the truth, and since some staffers have been known to feed journalists false details just to mess with them, you can never be sure of anything that comes out of this White House.<\/p>\n
Except the cruelty.<\/p>\n